I Need To Know A Lot About Mollies

[thefirstjohn]

Hi , firstly , i've been keeping fish for the last few years. Started with goldfish and kept discus for about 4 years. Recently i've sold my discus away as my new job is really keeping me busy.
But , as i have an addiction for fish keeping , i could'nt resist buying 12 mollies when the fish keeper told them that they won't require that much care.
Frankly , i like them more than discus , but i am having a hard time keeping them.
Firstly the night i brought them , all were active , next morning one was dead. I found that one of the molly was pregnant , it was just a little plump , not something like the pictures people post around here of mollies with huge tummies. So the female molly was compartively bulky and yet one day later, i saw fry in my tank.
Which was eaten in a few hours time , so my first question comes.
How do i really know that my molly is about the lay eggs?? so that i could put the fish in the breeding trap or something.

Another setback , yesterday , when i saw one of my fish , not swiming well and noticed , half of it's tail was gone , god knows what happened.
I observed the fish for some time , no fish was pecking at the tail , atleast until i was around , few hours later , the tail was completly gone and the fish had died.
I do have this bad habit of performing post mortem on dead fish. Gills looked fine , tail was gone , with skin near the tail with few red spots of injury i guess or maybe it was red spot disease.
As the fish was fat and a female , and as expected she was bearing babies. I took all of them out , but they were all dead with her.
Made me feel real sad. I mean really really sad. I never had pregnant fish dying before.

That moment i instantly changed 30% water , siphoned it , added rock salt. And then for the first time , i noticed few of the fish were scratching thier bodies with plants.

i am not regulating the tank temprature at the moment, it would be around 75 F.
please , i really really require some help here.
cheers

 

[twilight_angel]

such a bad exerience...

try this link about pregnant livebearer...

http/www.fishforums.net/content/forum/25...dy-To-Drop-Fry/

how big is your tank...

are the fishes in differnt sizes...

are you trusting the seller of the fish...

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum FirstJohn.
Mollies do not lay eggs like a discus would, they give birth to live fry. The fry are usually quite large compared to what you might have experienced with egg layers. Although mollies don't require the intense care that a discus does, when you first set up a tank it needs to be cycled before you add fish or you will need to change water as often as you did with discus until it is. There is a thread on cycling a tank with fish in it that may be helpful. Try the link in my signature for fish-in cycling.
You also said you added rock salt which I find a bit disturbing. I have all of my mollies in tap water with nothing added and they do fine. Some mollies have been acclimated to salty water but it is not necessary to do so. Mollies do not do well unless their water is somewhat hard and has a fairly high pH which can be accomplished with sea salt but not rock salt. In my case, my tap water is fairly hard at about 12 GH and has a pH of about 7.6 to 7.8 so I do nothing and the mollies seem to love it. If you have raised the salt content much at all in your tank I would gradually bring it back down with routine water changes. If your tap water pH is low or your water is soft, a better choice might be the things made for african rift lake cichlids since they also like hard and high pH water.

 

[twilight_angel]

how's your molly doing...

 

[jonnyf84]

ok, your not posting back so i'm hopeing you have fixed your problems but i doubt that happened over night. First did you cycle the tank? I presume if you kept discus you should know all about this so i won't go into detail.

Mollies aren't as easy to keep happy as most people think, soft water does them no favours and although not essential they will thrive in slighly brackish waters, a gravity of 0.003 salt will be perfect.

Mollies are livebearers so they won't lay eggs, mature mollies can give birth to over 100 live fry!

Do you have a test kit? If so please post KH, PH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate and temperature.

My guess without this info is that it is simply a new, un-established aquarium that has too many fish in it too soon, the added stress of been moved from the lfs and been pregnant in less than ideal water conditions probably proved too much.

Get back to us with test results if possible.


Jonny.

 

[thefirstjohn]

Hi , thanks for your consideration ,
Well , tank is 25 gallon , i am left with 10 of them.
Fishes are all same sizes
Well , most fish sellers take care of expensive fishes more , atleast this happens where i live.
so trusting him is always a gamble and surely there's no other choice.
Although the strains and colors of my mollies are not that good , but i am just bearing with what i have at the moment.
Rest of the fish looks fine at the moment , although one fish has a long fine string attached to it from the anal part.
I wonder what that is.
I am attaching the pictures of a female which i presume is pregnant , she moves a lot , so i was having trouble in getting a clear shot. My last fish that laid fry , was a just little more fatter but unexpectedly she laid babies.
I noticed two more baby mollies in tha tank , they were orange and instantly eaten.
I am attaching fish which seems to be pregnant and fatest in the tank. On the forum , i've read that the fish really has to be plump to lay fry.

Following are the pictures , she moves a lot all the time , so could'nt really get a clean shot.

 

[jonnyf84]

although one fish has a long fine string attached to it from the anal part.
I wonder what that is.

This might be obvious but its not poo by any chance? Long stringy poo is not a good sign, often associated with a poor diet or internal problems.
Well your not overstocked in the simple sense. Did you complete a full cycle? Did you add all 10 fish at once?
If so, 10 fish of this size is too much strain on the newly cycled tank, add fish slowly in future.

She looks pregnant to me but still has a while to go before she drops. I see you have platies also - are these also showing signs of illness?

It is hard to tell from the info given and without test results. But with no visible signs of disease except finrot i would say its a bacterial problem made worse by stress - That tells me two things:

Buy a test kit and rectify poor water conditions and treat with anti-bacterial meds.

 

[thefirstjohn]

HI , thanks for your advice. I am using an antibacterial med. Will be aquiring a test kit in a couple of days.
platties are so far doing aright. One more thing , one of the molly has gained bit of an extra size , she's a female and bullies all the rest nine , mostly during thier meals. I think she's causing a lot of stress to other fish.
Should i remove her